


i will dream of you, you'll dream of me too

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Asexual Character, Fluff, M/M, Slow Build, demisexual!akaashi, more importantly: not angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:57:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bokuto is a star in your life, a sun, a splash of colour upon a grey canvas and a trace of spontaneous upon your skin –the last thing you want is for all that to disappear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will dream of you, you'll dream of me too

**Author's Note:**

> Ah yes,,,, oocness.  
> I just needed to cure my writer's block. I'm so sorry. This is s o  
> It's 2am editing is so not on my list of things-to-do  
> Enjoy!

* * *

 

It seems ironic, almost, how to think of winter is to think of warmth, of scarves and coats and fires that crackle in the smallest of places, tongues of flames dancing in the air and casting shadows greater than themselves against stone walls, of fairy lights that glow like luminescent fireflies, of hot drinks in cold, gloved hands, and a feeling of calmness, of stillness, tranquility –as if time itself was as frozen as the water in lakes, every moment captured with the flash of a photo and recorded, documented.

But coffee has a strange way of making everything seem frigid, bitter.

(But everything seems colder when you’re alone.)

 

\---

 

Winter has a strange way of making everything drab, too.

Grey mist and grey clouds overhanging grey slabs of concrete that scrape against the sky, with trees that claw their way from beneath the earth like dead hands, leaves shaken off by a wind so sharp it bites through the thickest of coats, exposing everything to be left dry, raw, as if the skin has peeled away to reveal the bare bone underneath, as white as the frost that blankets the pavement.

(It also seems to make everything dull, blunt, as if every single day has its story carved into stone, the future nothing but a picture painted by dead hands in an equally as dead shade of grey.)

(But everything seems dull when you have no one to share it with.)

Perhaps it’s just poorly made, you think, one-quarter coffee and three-quarters milk, topped with enough froth to make a small bubble bath for an ecstatic bug. It tastes mildly of old regrets, faint disappointment, and pure _bitterness,_ and quite frankly, you blame the baristas.

(And it’s upon revaluation of your life that you decide you don’t particularly need anything more cold or bitter than what you already have, and you toss an unfinished cup into the nearest bin with a satisfying thump and a frustrating aftertaste left lingering like a bruise upon your tongue.)

 

\---

 

It’s an arbitrary decision really, one based on pure coincidence and simple logic rather than over-calculation and research –not that that’s something you would do in the first place for a coffee shop.

The practically run down, hole in the wall is illuminated by soft yellow light, smelling of cinnamon and sugar syrups, decorated by faded coloured chalk against black slate, echoing with the sound of distant grinders and frothers as they buzz in soft, low, tones. There are maybe three, four people actually inhabiting the café, and a bored barista at the front counter who’s drawing with her index finger on the marble top.

It’s not too far from campus, and it’s quiet, and you think that perhaps you’ve finally found a place away from the routine of shared-apartment life, of lectures and tutors and books and numbers, each one like another figure, another factor, information to be stored and collected, data, another fill in the column, another word in the stone. (To break routine, in essence, is to break glass, to destroy the old and create the new. Repetition is as bad as poorly-made coffee to you; it fogs-up your brain and makes it hard to think. New surroundings feel fresher, cleaner, no matter how dusty or suspiciously-stained the surfaces may be. )

You’re starting on your calculus when he walks in –and hey, jokes on you for picking an undergrad that requires chemistry, you’d expected maths but not _this_ much, _never_ this much- all quiet bell chimes and a certain subtle arrogance. You’ve been observant since before you could remember -a trait that comes through sheer reserve and slight withdrawal- and you can’t help but note the way he holds himself, small, somewhat, like a child uncomfortable in their own body, yet simultaneously so confident, his aura filling every limb of his body and beyond, spilling, curling like tendrils of smoke into the corners of the room, yet retreating at the same time. His hair is spiked in a way that makes you believe running your fingers through it won’t make it any flatter, and his mouth is so straight it almost looks forced, as if its natural state is a smile.

He’s cute, to be put simply, and he has a certain pull about him, like the moon and the tide. You make awkward eye contact when he catches you staring at him, and he simply smiles, a beam so wide-set and bright it makes your own mouth hurt a little in thought. If you’re a negative magnet, all bitter and cold and struggling to see light, then perhaps he’s a positive one –this is how you justify yourself, and it makes you shake your head.

You realise that you should probably head back now, that all the physics and chemistry has engraved itself into your head, and you pack up your books into a neat pile –largest books to smallest, _Akaashi Keiji_ scrawled in the top right corner of each, pencil case on top- and sling your bag over your shoulder when you finish, coffee cup left empty, save for a few dregs staring back at you.

When you pull the door open with a ring, the boy from before looks up, smiles at you and waves, and you give him nothing but a cold shoulder. (You double check his face in your memory banks and you realise that yes, a stranger just completely acted as if you were friends.)

(It’s only when you get home, shake the snow off your boots and dust white flakes off the top of your beanie that you realise you feel exhausted, as if you’d been standing in a spotlight for too long.)

 

\---

 

When you go back there six days later, any memory of too-friendly strangers wiped clear from your mind in place of formulae, he’s there again, and the memory resurfaces with an uncomfortable twist within your gut. It’s like those times when you lie in bed at night and remember something embarrassing you did when you were thirteen, and all you want to do is groan and hold your palms against your eyes until all you can see is bright green lights and you try to force yourself to think about _literally anything else_.

Too bad what happened was only one week ago, and the room is too quiet to groan without dragging attention to yourself. You shuffle onwards, order your coffee and dump your bag onto the seat beside you, pulling out the things you need. You run through a mental checklist, pencil, text book, workbook, _random stranger staring at you to your left._

Hm, weird, that last one isn’t usually on your list.

You wouldn’t call yourself a perfectionist, but you definitely don’t want to make a mistake –or something you’ll regret- and there’s nothing you dislike more than an awkward situation. You make it look like a casual cat-stretch and an ordinary eye-sweep of the room just to reaffirm the fact that yes, he _is_ staring at you, and yes, he _did_ just wave to you, _again_ , as if you were acquaintances rather than, well, strangers.

He doesn’t do anything more than that, though, leaves you in peace with your numbers and words and the music that you don’t recognise –the music that Kuroo gave you, the music he himself got through another friend. (It’s orchestral and it goes for a while, but it makes you feel like you’re some kind of sword wielding protagonist, and it at least supplies a little motivation to study. )

You go through yet another coffee, bittersweet and kind of plain after drinking so much, and staring at the dregs in the bottom of the mug you realise you may or may not have a caffeine addiction. Whatever, it’s probably at the bottom of your list of priorities, honestly.

After contemplating whether you want another, a yawn, and the split-second decision of _yes please_ , the stranger is standing in front of your table, smile on his face, coffee in hand, and you rip out one ear bud by tugging at the chord near your collar bone to see what he has to say.

“Akaashi, right?” He says, although it’s less of a question and more of a reaffirmation of what he already appears to know, as if reciting material for a memorised speech. After giving what you assume to be a puzzled look because hey, this guy knows your name, he places the saucer on the table and taps the front cover of one of your notebooks, your name scrawled in small, neat, letters. “You should probably try something less caffeinated, something…” He frowns, taps his finger against his chin as he searches for the word. “… Sweeter.”

(You’re left with the feeling of a winter’s sun, both burnt and chilled throughout with Goosebumps prickling across your skin, and yes, you have to tell yourself, that _really just happened._ )

(When you pick the mug up the drink is sweet yet slightly spiced, and it sets this warm feeling in your stomach that replaces the acquired-pleasantness of coffee with a fluttering flame, and you nearly miss the smudged characters of a phone number and the six simple letters that seem to spell out _Bokuto_ scrawled hastily on the saucer’s napkin.)

 

\---

 

“What are you doing?” Kuroo asks, pulling an apron over his head and tying the strings behind his back, peering down at you from scrutinising eyes and an arched brow.

“What does it look like?” You retort deadpan, the lines of your equal sign neat and straight as you carve them into the page. “Studying.” 

“I _know_ that,” Kuroo scoffs, as if offended, “I _meant_ why are you looking at your phone every three seconds?”

You blink, once, try to come up with a legitimate excuse. You wouldn’t _have_ to if you could actually afford a phone that didn’t have to be flipped open, one that was preferably less outdated than the Windows XP your laptop still has. Your phone is worse at running without fucking up than you were when you were ten and chubby around the edges, and Kuroo knows you wouldn’t keep that thing within thirty-feet of yourself without good reason.

And he also knows how to be, well, a jerk –a teasing one at that. You think about your options. Tell him the truth and he’ll tease you. Tell him to keep to himself and his curiosity will increase tenfold. Tell him some bullshit excuse teetering on the edge of believable –it won’t smother his nosiness, but it’ll keep him off your back.

The latter is the least troublesome, you suppose.

“Someone wants my notes, is all; they said they’d text me when they want to collect them.” You say.

Kuroo frowns in clear disbelief –you swear you’re a better liar than that- but he lets it slide for now. 

(And you’re lucky he does, because when you flip your phone open, the number is punched into an unsaved text message draft, of which the only words inside read ‘thanks for the coffee.’)

(You hit ‘send’ and positively _pray_ you won’t be left with an aftertaste of rue.)

 

\---

 

Whilst you may often categorise your regrets in order from worst to, well, least worst, (worst being the somewhat ingenious idea you had of getting a shared apartment with two men whose sexualities are almost more questionable than the limit of their libidos, least worst being that slightly uncalled-for comment you gave that girl in your 7th grade art class), you’re happy to know that texting a completely random stranger you met in a coffee shop, albeit -you’ve thought it once and you’ll think it again- a _cute_ stranger, sits somewhere as an outlier to the list, or one that has yet to be categorized worst-case scenario.

Relationships for you are kind of tricky, always have been, probably always will. It’s not that they don’t interest you or anything; more that other people struggle to agree with your Terms & Conditions. You’ve dated girls, you’ve dated boys, and each time you’ve only managed to come to the conclusion that the population of allosexuals lacking an open-mind is far too large. The whole being-an-asexual thing doesn’t really appeal to them much, and it seems to break the relationship each time. Granted, they say it was a different reason, but you can kind of tell.

(Whatever, you think, you could never date a person like that in the first place.)

Still, from the amount Bokuto texts you –and the amount of questionable winking emoji’s he throws in here and there- you don’t particularly think he’s looking for ‘just friends’.

_how was ur day???_

Your breath fogs up in the air around you as you flip open your piece-of-crap phone and read the letters on the screen, and as you bite down on your bottom lip, you find yourself hoping, that maybe, for once, this one will work out.

 

\---

 

Kuroo and his on-again-off-again psychology-major boyfriend are going at it, _again_ , so you and Iwaizumi decide to have a quiet study session –quiet meaning extremely loud music blasting from the surround sound audio system the three of you bought together last spring, to try and blot out whatever noises threaten to permeate the thin walls.

“Who’re you texting?” Iwaizumi asks, gestures with his chin towards the phone which lights up beside you, ‘Bokuto’ printed clearly on the little display screen on front.

You’re not entirely sure of what to say. You’ve actually only seen him twice, and on top of that you’ve never actually exchanged words –rather he gave and you just kind of sat there, inwardly gaping like a fish. You know his name is Bokuto Koutarou, he’s 20 going on 21, his favourite animal is an owl, and he’s majoring in human physiology. He doesn’t like shellfish of any kind, and he really overuses the ‘:>’ face too much. He’s not as smooth as he originally led you to believe, if anything he seems rather clumsy. He gets overexcited about way too much, asks more questions than your brain can keep up with, and he’s a little socially inept.

“A friend,” you say, and the words taste strange on your tongue. Texting on a daily-basis from 7am-12am evidently surpasses the point of acquaintance, but having only met twice kind of blurs the lines a little.

“Are they cute?” Iwaizumi asks, and you kind of stare into space a little while before deciding how you want to answer it. (There’s a large difference between thinking your thoughts and voicing them.)

“Yeah,” You say as you flip your phone open and read ‘ _we should meet up!!! : >’ _“He’s cute.”

 

\---

 

It’s either super cliché or just plain unoriginal, but you both decide on the coffee shop where you originally met. You’re five minutes early and  you hate yourself for looking too eager, but you take a seat by the corner window where you’ll see him coming, and you place your folded, fingerless-gloved hands on the table in front of you and tuck your chin into your scarf. Your coat lies flopped over the back of the chair, bag slung on top, and your feet are tapping irregular rhythms against the hardwood floor to the point where you’d wish they’d stop.

When he does arrive –five minutes late, what a pair you make- he arrives in a flurry of swirling snow and a smile that probably rivals the brightness of the sun hidden beneath thick clouds. Despite the fact that it’s all grey sky, grey coats, grey concrete and silver-grey hair, his eyes are an unusual colour of gold, you note, rich like honey and deep like amber, and you can’t find it within yourself to tear your own gaze away.

“Hi,” He says, voice quieter, softer, more surroundings-aware than the way you imagined it, than the way you read his texts in your head, smile growing impossibly wider, slumping into the chair opposite you.

“Hi.” You say back -and you’re still staring.

 

\---

 

Bokuto is as good at holding a conversation in person as he is through text, and even when you’re not talking the air is comfortable, familiar. He makes you feel as warm as the drinks he forces you to order, and by the third drink you have, you figure it’s not really the drinks that make you feel this way. He’s bright and endearing, full-on and kind of thick-headed, but you like that about him, and he excels in the parts that you seemingly lack. He’s funny, but he’s not witty, and your quick-whips often leave him speechless –remarkably- and feinting hurt. He’s easy to tease, and it’s pretty cute when he’s all speechless. (God-forbid the scene that plays in your mind when you imagine Kuroo meeting him, though.)

What starts as coffee-dates soon becomes study-dates, lunch-dates, and hang-out sessions, and it appears that Bokuto has flung open the door of your life and inserted himself right in the middle of your metaphorical living room. He’s unlike any other friend you’ve found before, easy to share with, completely honest, and it’s probably also due to the endless amount of playful, clumsy flirting the two of you exchange from time to time. Kuroo teases you for all the time you spend with him, and Iwaizumi just sends you these _looks_ , but you brush it all off. (The coffee you make each morning as a quick pick-me-up and a daily reminder to remember to kick your addiction begins to taste more bitter than before, but at least the clouds outside stop looking grey and instead appear silver. )

“Bokuto-san,” You start one night, one _late_ night, and you can feel him frowning on the other side at your honorific. (It’s not your fault you were raised so politely, jeez.) “You should go to bed.”

“So should you.” He retorts, and you can feel his grin translate in the little crackle of static so much so that it seeps into your bones like ink through paper.

You wrap the sheets tighter around your body and press the phone to your ear with your one free hand, and simply enjoy the silence. It’s not awkward, it never is, it’s just comfortable.

(When you hang up –and you do, eventually- your bed feels emptier.)

 

\---

 

Winter is nearly ending and so is your caffeine addiction, and as you seat yourself on a park bench and look at the pathetic excuse of trees, leafless and wilted, you think perhaps the only thing that flourished in such a season was your relationship with Bokuto.

(Who’s late, by the way, no surprise there. He was the one who called you out of the blue and demanded you meet him here to hang out, so why wasn’t he the one on time?)

You see him approaching from the distance, and he removes the hands fisted in his pockets to give you a half-hearted wave, eyes cast downwards as he comes and stands in front of you.

“I like you.” He states, like a schoolgirl with a crush, but blunt and to the point like, well, _him_ , feet shuffling awkwardly as he stands beside you, the sort of child-like innocence you’d noticed when you first saw him.

“You don’t do this often, do you, Bokuto-san?” You joke, smirk, stare straight ahead in case the blood flow to your cheeks gets too wild, faking the sort of confidence that mirrors the legitimate one Bokuto possesses.  He shakes his head slightly, glancing sideways, anywhere but your face. “Most people just say ‘hello’.”

“Just thought you should know.” He shrugs, seats himself beside you on the bench, legs spread wide and back slumped, head resting against the bench so much that you have to look down to meet his golden-eyes, watching you.

“I’m asexual.” You mutter softly, and he doesn’t so much as flinch.

“So?”

(When you lean down to kiss him his lips aren’t prepared, yet inviting all the same, and when you intertwine your fingers you find that his hands are shaking slightly, and when you stumble into your apartment giggling like children he tells you about his fake nonchalance and you admit your own, and you kiss him until both of your nerves disappear and he has to go and you’re left with a bittersweet aftertaste unlike one you’ve ever felt.)

 

\---

 

You have a dream that leaves you embarrassed and flustered and your underwear kind of wet and sticky, which means you’ve had what you would eventually come to refer to as The Revelation a.k.a the thing that puts the apparent demi in your newfound demisexuality. It startles you, at first, but part of you kind of thinks that it’s always been a thought in the back of your head, and that you were more gray than you were ever ace.

You also wake up with a knot in your gut and your lip gnawed between rows of teeth, and you’re happy, sure, but you’re also worried. Bokuto is a star in your life, a sun, a splash of colour upon a grey canvas and a trace of spontaneous upon your skin –the last thing you want is for all that to disappear. You tell him this the minute he calls you at 9:03am, that your friendship is more important to you than anything, and he laughs until he can’t breathe before saying _I could never stay away from you._

It makes you warm beneath your covers, and you pull up the blanket around your face because that boy is so damn embarrassing -and so oblivious that he’s not even aware of it.

“Boyfriend,” You mutter to yourself quietly in front of the mirror that morning. The word sits awkwardly in your mouth when applied to Bokuto, but everything needs to be broken in at first. (Just like your newfound sexuality apparently, you think as you glance down at your boxers.)

(And then you know you’re really fucked because you come in the shower with his name on your lips and the mysterious, newfound feeling of desire pumping through your veins.)

\---

You invite your ‘boyfriend’ over to get Kuroo of your back, and to get the fidgeting curiosity Iwaizumi holds back for your sake. Bokuto doesn’t seem to be intimidated by the idea of meeting your roommates in the slightest, and you don’t know whether to be relieved or downright worried.

He fits in as if he’d lived there always anyway, naturally, and you can’t believe you were legitimately anxious. Kuroo targets him like no other, and Iwaizumi scolds Kuroo for being rude, and you all get slightly tipsy over cold beer which causes condensation to gather on your fingertips. For some reason, the four of you decide to play monopoly –“Time to truly test the limits of your relationship,” Kuroo teases- and the game is thankfully saved when Oikawa comes knocking on the door and Iwaizumi disperses into the night, leaving a sobbing, broke Bokuto and a Kuroo with ten too many hotels in his wake.

You spend the rest of the night watching Bokuto and Kuroo interact and offering your penny’s worth every time the opportunity to flusters one of them –Bokuto, usually- comes, and your stomach hurts from laughter and your head feels foggy from too much beer.

But the night eventually turns into the morning, and Kuroo is all fake yawns and cat-like stretches as he shoots you sly smirks across the living room and states that he’s going to bed, you kids play safe.

You make-out for a while, bring him into your bedroom and hook you fingers around his belt loops, tug him towards you as he pins you against the door. Your tongue is in his mouth and his is in yours, you bite his lip and he leaves a trail of sweet kisses down your neck, your hands dance by the hem of your shirt and Bokuto inhales a sharp breath of air when your fingers teeter along his snail-trail. Still, your mouth tastes like stale beer and so does his, your head is still hazed and you’re conscious enough to know that you’re certainly not conscious enough to make any consent-giving choices, so you push him onto the bed and force yourself to promise to give him an explanation when his head –and yours- is less intoxicated.

(He wraps his arm around you in his sleep, and he purrs a little in your ear when he breathes out, but the feeling of his fully-clothed warmth pressed up against your back is nice, and your bed feels a lot fuller.)

 

\---

 

“I’m demisexual,” You state outright after he kisses you good-morning and you tell him off for gross morning breath with a playful shove. He doesn’t ask what that means, just kind of stares at you from where he’s propped his head up on one arm, blinking, shirt from the previous night all dishevelled from being slept in.

“Okay-“ He drawls out, slowly, “So have you-?”

“Yeah,” You admit, any traces of shame dispersing, “I want you.”

His body tenses a little, he licks his lips and his eyes glaze over a little and boy, you might have close to no sexual experience, but you can already tell that this is going to be too easy.

“So we take it slow?” He says, grins at you in a way that makes you want to kiss him senseless. (And maybe further, you guess, when you’re comfortable enough –the idea of trying something new excites you.)

“Yeah,” you say between yawns, rolling over and flittering off back to sleep. You peek through a slit in your left eye to see through the sky outside, where the sky is bright blue and the sun shines through restlessly, and you notice that the date on your bedside clock reads March 1st.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> one day i will title a fic not after a song but [today is not that day](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gB4iD6H7XI)  
> Thanks for reading!


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